(Sep 6, 2024 02:52 PM)stryder Wrote: [ -> ][...] He assumes that if he's the devil everyone thinks he is, his endorsement to a candidate is likely to poison at the same level as Novichok thus publicly supporting who he doesn't want in.
Coincidentally, a similar relational situation that
maybe causes mainstream health authorities to take a "
see no evidence, hear no evidence, speak no evidence" attitude about fluoridation research: "
If the nutjob community endorses _X_, then it automatically can't be true". (
Too much fluoride might lower IQ in kids, new federal report says)
On the other hand, though arguably a stretch now, Kamala's loyalty to policy views offshooted from
Critical Theory would have made her the most ideologically compatible (albeit not ideal) choice for Putin back when he had a KGB career (Soviet era).
Even today, there's a small(?) segment of those on the left who can't fully relinquish their nostalgia of the old Soviet Union and Red China. And identify with how Russia and China are still the key forces challenging the imperialism and after-effects of the historic socioeconomic oppression of other cultures committed by the West (colonization, racial discrimination, etc). I suppose Vlad could be partially appealing to that homesick far left, but again that's strained and tenuous.
Nowadays, there apparently are so many social democrats hiding under the "progressive" label that even the pundits are surrendering to conflating progressivism with anti-capitalism and antipathy toward Eurocentrism. The traditional progressives were robust capitalists, largely "left" only in the sense of hijacking Marxist social justice agenda[1] for their own do-gooder image. This is an "
inclusion of even the far-left" rebooting of "progressive" that is not unlike the 20th-century redefining of "liberal" from referring to the classic liberalism that fell out of the Enlightenment to meaning enthusiastic support for the various facets of the welfare state.
(2022) Why the far-left and far-right can’t resist Putin
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/why-...5a1rw.html
EXCERPT: On the progressive side of the ledger, some older leftists retain a lingering soft spot for Russia as a legacy of their past support of the Soviet Union - despite Putin’s economic and social policies being, in the main, conservative. The crucial factor that draws many on the far left towards Putin is a meeting of minds on foreign policy. They see the United States as a destructive imperial superpower, leading to a reflexively anti-American and anti-NATO worldview they share with the Russian leader. This is essentially the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” school of international relations.
Guardian columnist George Monbiot, a strident progressive and fierce critic of modern capitalism, this week decried the willingness of some on the activist left to parrot Putin’s talking points. “Among the worst disseminators of Kremlin propaganda in the UK are people with whom I have, in the past, shared platforms and made alliances,” Monbiot wrote.
“The grim truth is that, for years, a segment of the ‘anti-imperialist’ left has been recycling and amplifying Putin’s falsehoods.”
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(2023) The Left's Peculiar Alignment with Russia
https://www.newsweek.com/lefts-peculiar-...on-1808768
EXCERPT: In certain parts of the world, particularly in Latin America and pockets of the left in Europe, there seems to be a refusal to acknowledge the fall of the Wall. This translates into some of the left's support for Russia and their silence in the face of the country's aggression and illegal invasion of Ukraine, a refusal to support democratic governments, and an outdated anti-Americanism.
One possible explanation for the left's support for Russia is rooted in historical ideological affinity. Many leftist movements and leaders have traditionally admired the principles associated with the Soviet Union and its role in challenging Western capitalism, even though it resulted in a redundant failure. This historical legacy still influences their stance today, blurring the line between ideology and geopolitical reality.
The same can be said for the support of China and even North Korea that, despite the former being aggressively capitalist and authoritarian and the latter a hermit and likewise an authoritarian state, they dwell in the imaginary of part of the left as poles of resistance to global capitalism.
The left's alignment with Russia can also be attributed to a deep-rooted anti-imperialist sentiment and anti-Americanism. For some, Russia's resistance against perceived American hegemony and its willingness to challenge Western influence resonate with their ideological opposition to capitalist domination. The fact that Russia seeks to exercise its "imperial" power over neighboring countries, in particular those that were part of the USSR, escapes the left—or is simply ignored.
This often leads to a sympathetic view of Russia's actions for some, overshadowing concerns about aggression and invasion or the fact that Russia is as capitalist as any Western country—only without the same success.
- - - footnote - - -
[1] The Marxist left adopted many activist mascots in the first half of the 20th-century, to illustrate its commitment to social justice do-gooderism. Jews were merely one group, and the hard left had to drop its antisemitism to attract them again:
Jews in Radical Politics: America's Communist movement owed a lot to Jewish support:
Even had socialism not been their family’s and their people’s tradition, it did not escape these embittered young Jews, blocked in mid-passage by depression and discrimination, that the Soviet leadership evidently had taken the lead in mobilizing resistance to fascism and anti-Semitism abroad and that the Communist party in the United States positioned itself in the forefront of every campaign for racial and economic justice.
From 1934 on, too–reflecting Moscow’s new Popular Front approach–the Communists abandoned the former anti-Judaist and anti-Zionist propaganda of earlier years and appealed directly to Jews on issues of major Jewish concern.
In 1937, the Yiddish Cultural Alliance, a Communist-front group established in New York, began issuing a monthly literary journal, Yidishe Kultur, that dutifully parroted Communist appeals for unity against anti-Semitism and “world reaction.” The Communists even could say a kind word now for Jewish workers in Palestine, while the American Jewish Communist leader Moses Olgin informed his bewildered Jewish comrades that “we must learn not to scoff at religion.”
So it was, during these years of communism’s resurgence, that the Jewish component surfaced even more vividly than it had a decade earlier...